With Christmas rolling in on a Tuesday this year, studios released the week's new movies three days early to coincide with the holiday. I know I can't think of any better way of celebrating the birth of Jesus than by unleashing an awful, pointless Alien vs. Predator movie on the unsuspecting public.
Because of the odd date, the "holiday weekend" technically runs from last Friday to Christmas day on Tuesday. It's a completely ridiculous and almost entirely irrelevant way to compare the performance of the movies since the Christmas releases are only showing one day's worth of ticket sales against five days for last Friday's releases. If you're completely confused, don't worry, you're not missing much. Just pretend that the information I'm about to give in the next paragraph is completely insignificant. You shouldn't have to try very hard. It is completely insignificant.
Of the three new holiday releases only Alien Vs. Predator - Requiem managed to break into the top ten. The painful sequel drew in nearly $10 million on Christmas Day. What that really means is that the movie made more in one day than The Golden Compass and Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story made in their first five days. Congrats to the fan boys being able to spend their money faster than most would have expected. The Great Debaters took in $3.6 million on Christmas Day to take twelfth place over the five-day holiday weekend while The Water Horse: Legend of the Deep struggled to make a blip on the screen, only making $2.4 million and coming in fifteenth.
So, if the five-day weekend data is pretty much irrelevant, what can we look at to see how well these new movies are actually doing in comparison to the rest of the competition? The only real way to do it is to see how they performed on opening day (Christmas) and then, perhaps, also how they do over their first actual weekend.
On Christmas Day proper, the time where the cash count really shows how well the movie's did over the holiday, National Treasure: Book of Secrets held on to its number one spot with an impressive $13.6 million while I Am Legend also stuck to its guns, maintaining second place with $9.7 million. Alien vs. Predator - Requiem just missed out, coming in a close third with $9.5 million. The Great Debaters opened at number six with $3.6 million while Water Horse: Legend of the Deep just snuck it's way into the tenth place spot with $2.3 million.
Since there are no new releases this coming weekend, check back for the real weekend box office numbers on this week's new releases.
http://www.cinemablend.com/new/Holiday-Weekend-Box-Office-Update-7316.html
